Flash of Emerald

by Jane Arbor

  He was at his desk when the postal clerk brought in the afternoon mail, to be sorted by Hope for anything she could handle on her own initiative, the rest to be passed to him for his comment and ruling. Today most of it was trivial, the only other letter being an airmail from the Netfold and Islay Head Office which she carried to Craig unopened.

  He glanced through it, then up at her. ‘Had you heard anything like this was afoot?’ he asked.

  ‘Anything of which?’

  ‘Read it.’ He passed the letter to her and waited for her comment.

  ‘This publicity scheme for a television documentary on sugar? No,’ she told him. ‘There was no mention of it before I left England.’

  ‘And how do you view the idea?’

  ‘I?’ She looked her surprise at the question.

  ‘Well, should we co-operate or not?’

  She shook her head. ‘How should I know? Isn’t it for Madame de Faye and you to decide?’

  ‘For me to decide. For Victoire to acquiesce. And I wasn’t asking for your expert advice, but to speak for the average English woman viewer who uses sugar. Would she welcome a programme as to where her coffee-crystals and her molasses begin?’

  ‘I think she would. I don’t remember ever seeing one about cane.’ Hope referred back to the letter. ‘I gather Publicity proposes to approach TV; they send out a team to film the whole process here on Belle Rose?’

  Craig nodded. ‘From the cane roots up, you could say.’

  He took back the letter and re-read it himself. He fingered his chin in thought ‘Yes ... yes. Come March, they can film the spring ratoon which should be sizeable, and beforehand we can school them on everything else. Yes, I think we should play along.’ He tapped the paper with a fingernail. ‘This signature—this Perse—Publicity and Public Relations. He’s been over here twice, though we didn’t meet I was in Barbados. A bit of a youngling, I believe—do you know him yourself?’

  ‘Yes. He is young, but they think a lot of him at Head Office,’ said Hope, with a memory of Ian, of his slightly diffident courting and of the Happy Landings posy which had faded so soon.

  ‘Well?’

  The crisp question, cutting into her thoughts, sounded irrelevant ‘Well? Well what?’ she echoed lamely.

  ‘I was asking whether you knew Perse well, and if so, how well?’ Craig pointed out. ‘In what sort of connection have you met him? Socially or on a business level or how?’

  ‘Oh, I see! Well, socially mostly. We’ve played tennis together and been to Head Office functions—dances and things. He’s been to my uncle’s house too.’

  ‘Married?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘And business-wise?’

  ‘I’ve told you—he has a good reputation with the Directors. Why, if you do invite the TV team, do you think he means to come out too?’

  ‘Well, don’t you?’ Craig parried. ‘If the idea is his baby, do you suppose he’ll let it be nursed along without his foot on the cradle-rockers? No, it sounds to me as if he’s inviting himself, so you’ll be able to continue your acquaintance, won’t you?’

  ‘We can do that when I go home again,’ Hope said evenly.

  ‘You can count on his still being available when you do go?’

  ‘Available?’

  ‘To partner you at tennis and to escort you to dances? Or, as a Coming Man with a Future, does he never give you cause to fear competition for him?’

  Where was this catechism leading? ‘I’ve never thought about it,’ she said.

  Craig laughed shortly. ‘Does that mean modesty forbids your admitting you have never had to think about it? Well, all right, we’ll invite him, and I must resist the temptation to suspect that his astute timing has anything to do with the slaughter of two birds with one stone.’

  Hope tried to work that out. ‘Are you implying that he’s coming because he wants to see me?’

  ‘The thought had occurred.’

  ‘Well, it needn’t!’

  ‘No?’ That was all. Glancing at her injured hand, in his next breath he was asking her to call a junior to take the dictation of his reply to Ian’s letter. He had become the unapproachable autocrat once more.

  It seemed that Hope had been right in thinking that Victoire would conveniently overlook Tina’s truancy, for Tina, at least outwardly contrite, was soon returned to the favour of her employer’s whims.

  Nominally she was given the freedom of one afternoon a week, and when this did not clash with Victoire’s convenience she had the use of the runabout car to take her where she pleased.

  It was on one such ticket-of-leave Saturday that she met Barbara and Hope shopping in the town. They had tea at a cafe and exchanged news. Tina had received her mother’s approval and a sizeable cheque from her father, enabling her to stay on in Madenina until he sent her the next; Hope told her of the proposed television project and that Ian Perse was to escort the team.

  ‘Fun for you,’ commented Tina. ‘You’ll have someone to go around with at last—’ She explained to Barbara, ‘This Ian character fancies Hope no end. I wouldn’t put it past him to have laid this on, so that he could get out to see her. When do they come?’ she asked Hope, who said,

  ‘They’re due by the banana ship in about ten days. And if you suppose Ian has all that influence with the Top Table, you’d better think again.’ She was irritated that Tina should have jumped to the same false conclusions as Craig had. Ian was coming and it was logical that he should. But for her he had become so shadowy and unimportant a figure that she knew she wasn’t looking forward to his appearance on the Madenina scene.

  Presently Barbara excused herself. There was no house delivery of mail on the island, and she wanted to collect her letters from her Post Office box.

  ‘I’ll come with you,’ Hope offered.

  ‘No. No, I’ll bring any mail there may be for you. But stay with Tina, and I’ll call back for you,’ said Barbara.

  Looking after her as she went out into the street, Tina mused, ‘Easy to guess why she didn’t want you along.’

  ‘Didn’t want me? What do you mean?’ Hope asked.

  ‘That she isn’t likely to want anyone along when she collects her letters. For instance, have you ever been with her lately when she’s called for them—or opened them?’

  ‘I don’t know that I have. But what are you hinting at, for goodness’ sake? That Barbara has something to hide?’

  Tina nodded. ‘Something I’d want to hide—anonymous letters. Well, wouldn’t you?’

  Hope stared. ‘Anonymous letters? To Barbara? How on earth do you know?’

  ‘From Madame de Faye.’

  ‘And how should she know?’

  ‘I suppose she has her spies. Barbara is very far from being one of her favourite people, and I’d say that Barbara in trouble would just about make her day.’

  ‘But what kind of trouble could Barbara be in that Victoire de Faye would know about?’ worried Hope.

  ‘I’m not saying she knows what trouble,’ Tina corrected. ‘Only that she isn’t sorry about the letters she hears Barbara has been getting, and the reason for that’s pretty obvious. It’s—Craig.’

  ‘Craig?’ But Hope was not as incredulous as her echo sounded, realising as she did now that Victoire’s pointed questions about Craig’s intimacy with Barbara had only been part of a pattern of hostility to which Tina had just added another piece.

  Victoire, all her knives out against Barbara, was prepared to sharpen them where she could—on the welcome news that Barbara had an anonymous enemy; on whatever she had tried to trick Hope into revealing about Craig’s and Barbara’s association. But what she did hate about it? What had she, the wealthy owner of Belle Rose, to fear from it? Though despising her curiosity, Hope repeated with less emphasis, ‘Craig Napier? How do you mean he’s involved?’

  ‘In the usual way,’ said Tina airily. ‘Madame is jealous of Barbara Paul—plain, green-eyed jealous, that’s what. Ever heard it makes enemies of peo
ple, no?’

  So! For Hope it was as if another shape in the ugly design had dropped into place. Victoire hated Barbara because she wanted Craig herself! And yet how could she, when at every turn that Hope had witnessed, she and Craig seemed to be fighting for mastery, the one over the other, Craig’s dynamism winning against Victoire’s worst possible grace. No cordiality, no pulling together, no friendship, no willing surrender ... No, it just wasn’t possible. Tina and the pattern had to be wrong!

  But perhaps it was to convince herself as much as Tina that she said, ‘Of course. But I don’t believe it of Craig and Victoire. They don’t seem even normally friendly.’

  ‘Do they have to be, in front of other people?’ Tina countered. ‘What did I tell you about the love-hate thing? She probably provokes him deliberately because she enjoys being bullied by him. And can he bully? Oh, my!’

  Hope did not reply, but she looked at Barbara with a new curiosity when the latter returned, bringing two letters for Hope, but saying nothing of having found any awaiting herself, until Tina asked pertly, ‘No luck? Too bad,’ to which Barbara said, ‘Yes, there was one for me. Nothing important,’ in a flat tone which could have been either casual or snubbing. If Tina’s guess were right, there was nothing in Barbara’s manner to confirm it, and Hope could not know then how errant chance was to give Barbara’s secret into her own reluctant hands.

  One of her letters was from Ian Perse, written from England before he and the television crew had left for Madenina by sea. He wrote eagerly. It had been too long since he had seen her; her news of Madenina, of the ‘Wish you were here’ variety, wasn’t enough. By the time she got his letter, it wouldn’t be long before he arrived himself; she had better see to it that she kept her job with Craig Napier until then; it wouldn’t be at all funny if he landed on Madenina to find she was on her way back to England; meanwhile he could hardly wait.

  Hope read this on the verandah when she and Barbara had returned to the bungalow that evening. Barbara, who had been in her room earlier but was not there now, had left wide her french window on to the verandah, and as Hope was refolding Ian’s letter, reflecting that he was taking a lot for granted, a sudden gust of wind swept some small litter—a dressing-table mat, a tissue, a folded paper—out from the room to flutter at Hope’s feet.

  She picked them up, her thumb inadvertently uncreasing the paper as she did so. There was some writing on it—not Barbara’s, but an awkward, disjointed scrawl of a few words which forced themselves upon the eyes.

  She read,

  ‘One trusts you are learning your lesson—that soon you will have no friends at all, if you continue to encourage your lover. And though you may care nothing for your own already damaged reputation, one would suppose that you might care about his.’

  That was all. It was without greeting or signature, and though she had never seen one before, Hope knew it at ones for what it was—a piece of cowardly scurrility which had to be sent under disguise. But even without Tina’s hints, Hope would have been in little doubt that the recipient was Barbara; it had been swept from her room, and whether or not it had arrived today, she must have received it, opened it and read it at some time.

  Nor could Hope wonder as to the ‘lover’ to whom it referred. Sick with dismay, she knew—even without Tina’s help—that it was Craig. Craig—who hadn’t been near Barbara unnecessarily for weeks, but the same Craig who had once been her welcome, near-daily visitor; who had often kissed her, and on one night Hope remembered only too well, had held her in his arms—but had not willingly met her again since.

  Craig—who had left her to engage in some kind of grotesque travesty of a love-affair with Victoire de Faye? Craig?

  Hope fingered the letter she held. It wasn’t hers. She shouldn’t have read it, however boldly the bizarre script had demanded her curiosity. In her other hand were the lace mat and the tissue. She must put them all back, close the window upon them and for all her pity and bewilderment, must keep the happening from Barbara.

  But as she moved towards the window a thought struck her about the letter’s wording.

  ‘One trusts’. ‘One would suppose’, it had said—a usage which was much more common to French than to English. So who, of the few people in Barbara’s circle, was French? It had to be a woman. Poison-pen writers always were—A woman?

  Suddenly, on a totally unreasoned flash of intuition, Hope was sure she knew who the writer was; that it was no vague enemy of Barbara’s; it was a very certain one, Victoire de Faye herself!

  It was something Hope felt she knew as surely as if Victoire had admitted it, knew it both by instinct and by an as tiny, trivial a memory as she had ever experienced—Crispin’s innocent, ‘Belle-mere can write with her left hand too. That’s what made me try, when I saw her doing it—’

  To Hope’s mind it proved that Barbara hadn’t two enemies, but only one; the one who, however warpedly, wanted Craig Napier; who hadn’t known, when she had questioned Hope, how far she had succeeded in wresting him from Barbara, and had continued to use the means by which she meant to do it.

  And in all this coil, what prospects were there for Hope herself? None, obviously, but that of being for Craig the robot he had claimed he would welcome as a work-partner. When she went back to England he would have already forgotten that he had ever kissed her lightly in the name of an island tradition; he would remember her only as the girl who had heeded his warning that efficient secretaries shouldn’t harbour sentimental dreams.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  If only, Hope thought, Barbara would confide in her! Though if Barbara had no more proof of Victoire’s authorship of the letters than she herself had, and if she feared that Craig had indeed deserted her for Victoire, she might be reluctant to move against her rival for Craig’s sake. For even Hope could see that such a scandal would have the recoil of a whip. Belle Rose would suffer, and so might Craig, and Hope’s guess was that Barbara’s generosity would not invite that.

  But where was it all going to end? What had Barbara done—or been—that could give Victoire grounds for her threats of Barbara’s continuing ostracism by her friends? And what was the real truth of that? Was Barbara being deliberately shunned? Hope felt it was more than possible that she would never know.

  Now, with the onset of spring, work all over the plantation was quickening. On new land the cuttings which had rooted during the winter rains were sprouting into vigorous growth, were being fertilised, sprayed with insecticides and weeded, though not scheduled for harvesting until the maturity of their first ratoon, twelve months or so ahead.

  On established terrain the previous year’s cuttings were being readied for their own first ratoon, as were longer-established canes for their second and third and the rest of their productive life. Here the overall scene was of a forest of stout stems, broad branching greenery, topped by feathery fronds as soft to the touch as pampas grass and as decorative.

  There were alarms, false and genuine, of pest infestations, unseasonal floods, and prophecies of a sugar market from which the bottom had fallen out. In the office, tables of incentive bonuses—for working in heavy wet undergrowth or on the unpopular days of the weekend—were drawn up, to be rejected by the foremen, returned for revision and finally agreed with the management. A system of patrols was set up to guard the ripened canes from theft by the neighbourhood children in search of a sweetmeat, and by their parents, well practised in the art of putting pirated cane through the family mangle to extract a rough intoxicant from the sugar juice. And in the midst of all this heightened activity on Belle Rose the banana ship, on its fortnightly shuttle between England and the banana-producing islands of the West Indies, docked in Port Belain harbour.

  Victoire, flattered by the publicity Belle Rose would collect to the envy of the other local estates, was graciously laying on a party for the television team and the captain and officers of the ship on its overnight stay in port. Hope was invited, but Barbara was not, and if! Hope had been able to think o
f a plausible excuse she would not have accepted for herself. But Craig took it for granted she would go, both to the party and to meet the ship with him at the docks.

  They drove down. They were early and the ship was not in. But the usual gay crowds which gathered for the periodic excitement of ‘banana ship day’ were already there, milling up and down in festive idleness; tourists with cameras at the ready, pedlars touting fruit and souvenirs and West Indian girls, rainbow-dressed on flirtation parade, going into huddles of giggling feminine gossip and too-pointedly ignoring the ogling men and boys of their set, as leisured and sauntering as themselves.

  Craig installed Hope at a table on the front terrace of the Yacht Club, brought her the drink she chose and joined her with his own.

  They watched the kaleidoscope scene on the quays. Hope, admiring the girls’ gay dresses, hadn’t understood Craig’s comment on the jaunty flair of their head-kerchiefs.

  ‘The one-points and the fours well in the majority, but that’s, to be expected, the twos and threes having no further need to advertise,’ he had said, and to her puzzled look, ‘Has nobody explained to you the code of signals they use by the way they tie the madras—that gaudy bit of nonsense on their heads?’

  ‘Signals? To whom?’ Hope queried.

  ‘To the men, of course, as to their availability. For instance—one corner of the madras tweaked upright means the girl is heartwhole and unattached. A show of two points means she’s engaged; three, that she’s happily married, and four, that though she may be married or a young widow, she doesn’t want it thought she’s out of the hunt for good. It’s a variation on the invitation-game all women play—a shade more direct, that’s all.’

  Hope sat forward, counting perky knottings in proof, and finding it. ‘And does it get them the man they want, do you suppose?’ she asked.

  ‘A particular one? Who knows? But at least they’re offering him a short cut, while being fair to all the others.’ Craig paused. ‘I hear from Victoire there’s a little woman in a boutique on Nassau Boulevard who ties a very chic madras for her clients. On fancy-dress occasions Victoire has worn one herself with considerable panache. If you’re interested, I daresay the lady would run one up for you too.’